Help needed with limestone floor

[tilemark]

hello folks,
im hoping for a bit of sound advice here cos i'm a little in the soup!

ok i have a floor of 40m2 where i have laid a honed limestone light beige (quite shiny too) floor tile.
this is my problem:

the houseowner has been a nightmare and on my back since day one even though he booked me for tuesday and the tiles didnt arive till thursday!

anyway onto my problem!:
i left the job on monday with a view to coming back on thursday to clean and seal..
impatient guy decides to clean tiles himslef with a grout/ cement remover of which he spent all day doing, then at the end of the day he goes and applies a coat of lithofin stain stop!.

so to cut story short he sealed it without cleaning it properley and sealed it whilst it must have still had some moisture content.

now he has what looks like smear marks all over every tile and blames it on the fact that i got adhesive over the tiles!!.

obviously the relationship is a little sour between us now and this has reulted in him bringing in another tiler to quote to put the job right.

the tiler has quoted to apply WEXA to the floor with some type of machine and then re-seal the floor.

here is my problem /s

lithofin says that wexa doesnt remove sealer??? shouldnt a sealer remover be used? and then the adhesive be scrubbed off??
what is the machine he would be using,
does the sealer even need stripping??

what insults me even more is that the other guy's price is twice what i charged to lay them in the 1st place! (( thats if im getting the true picture!! ))

in the interest of ggod will - and to get paid - i want to sort the job out and have a happy customer so all advice is gratefully received!!
help!!!!!!!!!!!!
ps - sorry about the long post!

 

[tjsmiler]

Hi Tilemark

Sorry mate but i'm to new to help in anyway but just wanted to wish you luck. I think your doing the right thing trying to keep the customer happy, even though he seems like a total prat.

Good luck mate and sorry i can't help but i'm sure someone on here will

Toby

 

[Concept PHT]

Sometimes it makes good sense to use your camera - before, during and after shots. As if you are taking them for your NVQ portfolio.

That way, when people like this come the funny one, you have them bang to rights when they start mouthing off about that its all your fault.

Another good one is to have a continuity tester for your UFH. Obviously test the system before and after the tile fixing, but more importantly, show the customer before you leave site that there is a circuit in the UFH.

So when the cowboy electrician comes in, blows the circuit then tries to blame the tiler for the **** up, you also have him by the balls too.

Been there, seen it and done exactly that. Works a treat. 🙂

 

[UKTT Darren]

Sounds to me like the guy has used the wrong cleaner, All limestone, travertines, marbles etc are PH neutral tiles, therefore any type of acid cement cleaner will chemicaly react and stain the tile. All products with these type of tiles have to be acid free.
If this is the case I cannot see how you can clean them back up. You can get sealer removers, that would be a the start of a repair attempt.
From Darren NE tiling training Gaffa.

 

[L & R CERAMICS]

just a suggestion but when you seal light limestone tiles this brings the colour out more so get a tile that you havent laid and rub grout over it then let it stand until you want to wash it off,like you would when you lay them,then seal that one tile and see what happens,by the sounds of it the customer wasnt expecting the sealer to bring the natural clours out of the tiles which without looking for myself ,is whats probably happening also do they need sealing the reason why im asking is we done a floor wth a black stone tile which also had a shine to it then sealed it and it went even darker ,then when you spilt something on it i.e water and left it to dry white marks would appear shortly afterwards ,fortunately the customer supplied all of the gear as he felt he knew what he was buying so we still got paid ,ive agreed to go back in 6 months to see how they are ,you have said its on every tile are you 100% this is not actually in the tile